No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting Book

The insights into the motivations of US knitters through time were enough to keep me reading this book. Anne Macdonald tackles a difficult topic in a way that is both academic and engaging. For myself, a steady though not productive knitter, it sparked many reflections on the task of knitting, its trendiness, and its stigma.

This book caused me to reflect on how absolutely anonymous knitted works are. A well-knit item could have been knit by any experienced knitter. There is no way for an individual to sign the work itself. Instead some sort of written tag must be found or some entry in a contest or diary. What does that say to knitters today who seek accomplishment through finishing hand knit projects to give or use? In modern society are we content with anonymous output, private admiration, and simply the joy in a project well done? It is funny to me that many people knit today to challenge the machine produced world. They want uniqueness, something that few others have. They want to prove they can knit a sweater, a bag, a scarf. This is so tied into ego that it seems completely at odds with the absolute anonymity of the task.

I found it interesting that in the early chapters, there was very little documentation or complaint of poor quality knitted items. Yet, later chapters especially around WWI and WWII found that many items donated to the war effort had to be reknit. The doing of knitting became more important than the quality of the finished project. This seems to parallel the gradual replacement of knitting as something necessary with knitting as a symbol of femaleness, playing a role, doing one's duty to family and society. It was not hard for me to see in this book how the attitude that many of my friends have that knitting is old fashioned, stigmatizing woman's work came in to being.

My favorite part of the book is reflected in its title -- no idle hands. The idea that busyness is part of a full, interesting, productive life. So much of modern life is striving toward leisure, not doing, relaxing, passivity that the appeal of busyness gets devalued. I enjoy knitting because it is busyness for my mind and for my hands. And this book connects me to all those other women who knit through necessity, through sadness, through joy, busy in our history.